Fourteen St. Charles Parish area firefighters participated on September 11 this month in a memorial stair climb at the Heritage Plaza building in Metairie, in honor of the firefighters that lost their lives as they sought to save victims trapped in the World Trade Towers in 2001.
Organized by Deputy Chief Ed Griffin of the Eastside St. Charles Parish Volunteer Fire Department (VFD), the stair climb memorial is a tradition shared by many other firefighters from all over the United States each September.
“Across the nation, starting in 2002, we had firefighters that began climbing stairs as a memorial to the lives that were lost on 9/11 in 2001,” Griffin said.
Originally from New Orleans, Griffin moved away to Orlando, Florida where he later retired after leading a 30-year firefighting career. He began honoring firefighters that lost their lives in the September 11 terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers with an annual stair climb memorial while working in Florida.
“So, when I moved back [to Louisiana], I was still continuing to do this myself, even though I didn’t have the group to do it with,” Griffin said.
Local volunteer firefighters he worked with at the Eastside St. Charles Parish Volunteer Fire Department saw his dedication and wanted to participate alongside him locally with their own memorial stair climb. Griffin began calling local area high-rise building owners around four years ago, seeking an accommodating building owner willing to host the firefighting group he’d put together for a memorial stair climb.
“And we weren’t welcomed at a lot of places, surprisingly,” Griffin said. “But when I reached out to Heritage Plaza, they did open their arms to us, and that’s been four years now.”
The Heritage Plaza building is an 18-story Class A office tower on Veterans Memorial Boulevard owned by Frank Stewart, Jr, whose family at one time owned the nation’s second largest funeral home consolidation company, Stewart Enterprises.
Stewart’s management company, Stewart Development, LLC, worked with Griffin and his team to accommodate the 14 St. Charles Parish firefighters as they sought to remember their fallen 2001 firefighting comrades that lost their lives at the World Trade Towers in New York.
To emulate the 110 floors of the tallest of the two World Trade Towers, the firefighters – in full firefighting gear weighing as much as 70 pounds – climbed the stairs of the 18-story Heritage Plaza building almost six and a half times. The stair climb would take the group around 75 minutes to complete.
“Sometimes people [ask] – ‘did any of the firefighters on that day of 9-11 actually make it to the 110th floor?’” Griffin said. “Well, honestly, the highest floor that any firefighter was known to make it to on that day was 78.”
The World Trade Towers eventually collapsed after being struck that mid-September day in 2001 by two large jet airliners, preventing firefighters from being able to rescue men and women trapped on upper floors. Those firefighters tragically perished along with the victims they were attempting to save. A monument is now in place at the former World Trade Tower site, in remembrance of all that lost their lives.
Firefighters participating in the stair climb memorial still choose to climb all 110 floors instead of stopping at floor number 78 – not to make it harder on themselves, but to remember the ultimate sacrifice the New York area firefighters made.
“The fact is, they would have [climbed all 110 floors] if they could have,” Griffin said.
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